B.C. Transportation Minister Todd Stone defends his government’s commitment to replace the Massey Tunnelwhile transit improvements will require a referendum. Let’s throw it all on the table and map out a better governance system, he says.

Well, one of those items on the table would have to dump the referendum and get on with building better transit. Stone insults transit riders who have had years of being passed up regularly by overcrowded buses when he claims those south of the Fraser say a new crossing is long overdue.

The Liberals continue to treat motorists as if they are superior to transit users.

Ron van der Eerden, Vancouver

No tolls before spending cuts

Before adding tolls to bridgeswe should get government spending under control, particularly all these excessively high wages.

Richard Mueller, Abbotsford

Toll ’em all!

To make the transportation system fair, every single bridge, tunnel and the Sea-to-Sky Highway should be tolled. Even 50 cents per car and $1.50 on any larger vehicle would collect more than enough money for new projects and maintaining existing infrastructure.

I also suggest having ICBC collect the tolls. By doing this nobody will escape and you can eliminate the new bureaucracy, Treo, created just for new Port Mann Bridge. I can already hear la crème de la crème on the North Shore moaning!

Tony Paone, Port Coquitlam

Liberals double bill taxpayers

I would like to give a heartfelt thanks to the B.C. taxpayers for paying for and building all those bridges in B.C., especially the new Port Mann Bridge.

Thanks for nothing to the B.C. Liberals and Christy Clark for making us pay twice in the form of tolls. Typical!

Brian Barnes, Steveston

Feds raided our pension plan

Letter-writer Steen Petersen is correct in saying that the Canadian government raided the surpluses in the public-service pension plan. I worked for the federal government for 39 years and receive a pension (not gold plated).

In the late 1990s, Ottawa took $30 billion of surplus money from our pension plan! There was a law suit against them and an appeal and in both cases the judge ruled on behalf of the feds, saying that why would us “pensioners” care what fund our pension was paid out of as long as we were paid the amount that was owed to us and the amount was paid on time.

Now, years later, all of a sudden our pensions are unsustainable. Perhaps the Treasury Board could see fit to put our surplus pension funds back where they belong. That surplus money belonged to the people on pensions now, who paid 7½ per cent of their wages into it, the civil servants still working and paying into it, and the federal government as the employer.

Sharon Sims, Vancouver

No English in signs is racist

I read Henry Yu’s article with great interest and found myself agreeing with him on many points, finding his description of the gentleman offended by a Cantonese discussion deplorable and agreeing, also, that those for whom English is a second or even third language should not deny their heritage or cultural background.

However, I was dismayed by his comments on English-language signs I to see him compare the idea of a requirement for English signage to the racism faced by early Japanese and Chinese settlers. It is hardly in the same vein, and his comparison belittles the struggles faced by those in the past.

As an immigrant, a visible minority and a proud Canadian citizen, I’m afraid I cannot see the racism in asking that a person conducting business in an English-speaking province, in an English-speaking city, should display signs in English. In fact, what this demonstrates to me is an attitude of exclusiveness. Signs only in Chinese tell me I am not welcome, as no effort has been made to make me feel welcome.

The vast majority of humanity would choose to live in the Lower Mainland if they could. And who can blame them for wanting to escape the poverty, despotism, violence and real racism and tribalism in their homelands?

So it takes special kinds of hubris and audacity for The Province to run a series bemoaning the racism it sees as endemic in this oasis of peace, prosperity and civility.

Visitors to Vancouver might well marvel at this serial self-flagellation, coined perfectly in the ridiculous title, Racism in paradise.

“Racism!”— real or concocted — is the oxygen of the Left. Conservatives don’t play the race/ethnicity identity game. Like Martin Luther King, Jr., we value the rights and responsibilities of individuals in a civil society, regardless of skin colour. We’re tired of the Left assuming we are racist because a lot of us are white.

And, thanks, we don’t need a newspaper editorial to lecture us on who to befriend for the sake of communal comity.

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